Duke Nukem Forever

Yeah, this game is no where near as good as Duke Nukem 3D, but I don't think it's as bad as everyone says it is. Outside of the dated graphics and humor, the game is alright. There's still a lot of environmental interactivity, you can increase your health in various ways, and many Duke 3D enemies and weapons return. The shooting is actually kinda fun, I liked weapons like the shotgun and the shrinker, many Duke 3D enemies like the Assault Troopers, Octabrains and Pigcops return with many of them being not changed that much, and I think most of them are satisfying to kill. The game often has puzzles and driving sections that serve as distractions from the combat and I didn't care much for them. Boss fights suck since the bosses can easily kill you and there's no checkpoints between boss phases. So you fought the final boss and you die in the last phase? Too bad, you are sent to the beginning of the fight.


Duke Nukem Forever is not really a bad game imo, just alright. The combat is actually fun and the minigames are fun especially if you play them to get health boosts. But then the bad boss fights, the sections that distract you from the combat and other things bog the experience down.

7/10

I agree it's terrible for a (14?!) year wait but I personally like what we got here (played this on Xbox but also got this version for the expanded inventory and proper freeze ray) also love the executions and the doctor who cloned me dlc is a blast

definitely superior to the console version

Maybe the first review I am writing. Duke Nukem spells fond memories of childhood and while I resumed playing it just to uninstall it faster and check one more finished game from the library, in the end I can say that I enjoyed it and will also buy the DLC. Good fun, good memories, mindless shooting around and loads of ironic punches delivered by Duke, targeted towards other popular shooters.

Give it a shot!

its duke dude, its cool and bad ass

A very average generic shooter with a modern feel, but a classic name. Duke Nukem Forever takes a step backwards with cheesy humour which is simply not funny, boring generic game play and uncontrollable vehicle and turret sections. There were some moments of enjoyment, however I feel most of these were nostalgia from seeing something recognisable from Duke Nukem 3D. Worth a shot, but prepare for some disappointment in the process.

The game play tries to be like the original Duke Nukem games. But the Duke franchise needs the Doom Eternal treatment.

In the hour i spent on this game, I pushed E to open, tapped scp to release, drove an RC car for some reason and got stuck in a casino slot machine room trying to just progress. This game is garbage ran out by morons.

The game is ok but the one who designed the truck levels, I hope you were fired and that you are still unemployed. Those sections are the biggest pieces of garbage I have ever seen. To think that someone allowed a stupid designer who had never played a car game nor drove a car his/her entire life is ridiculous.

graphics is so blurry not sharp, but thats perhaps studio issue

Not a perfect game. The gunplay is amazing, good graphics, and some decent platforming. Wasn't a huge fan of the underwater sections and the night vision glasses could be a little hard to work with. Great controller support. 100% worth the 4 bucks I paid on sale. God bless. :)

A nonsensically over-hyped utter failure of a game. This is the ultimate "boomer shooter", and I mean boomer shooter. The humor here is for emotionally stunted man-children who stopped learning emotional regulation at age 13, yet believe they are the coolest, most capable, most virile creatures alive on the planet. The impotence of this game, its culture, and the ideological space behind it are the funniest part of the game, but if you spent money on it, the humor is gone immediately.

The duke deserves a new game. this may not be the best game or the best duke game but its not bad. The game play though for it is really fun. Feels nice using a shot gun and having a simple story. can say some things feel dated on it. but 15 years later. it holds up not bad. i wish for the grand return of the duke.

there is a lot i want to say about this game. i could say it if i wanted, but at that point i might as well make a youtube drama slop video about it. let me summarize this for you, the developers don't care about duke nukem at all. if they cared, they would have finished this game back in 2001. the 2001 version is absolutely amazing, even if it is 20% finished, it is so much better than this gutter trash. the developers just saw whatever was cool in 2008, and shoved that in the game, they didn't even care about what duke was like before. this game, is not worth any amount of your time. piece of shit, let's move on.

yep best game ever 10

I liked it, the multiplayer was awesome.

It really isn't as bad as many folks will have you believe. It's Duke dialled up perhaps a little too high but still nonetheless enjoyable. I liked it when it released and I still do now. The shrunken puzzle/platforming sections I find to be particularly clever and fun to tackle. One issue it does have occasionally is pacing. Some sections drag on for a bit too long. Also, The Dr Who Cloned Me DLC is in some ways even better than the base game as well. Hail to the King, baby!

Duke Nukem is an incredible character but this game doesn't do him justice. The quirkiness starts very strong but quickly turns bland. The gameplay is underwhelming, levels are ugly and the shooting feels weightless.

PROS
- Crude humour
- Badass 80's style protagonist
- Sexy babes
- There are some creative, quirky ideas like using shrink machines and light platforming through turning cogs and machinery. There's a monster truck which is neat. There's a western style town / Mexican standoff. Simultaneously, there's some really lame lame, lazy parts void of thought or effort like large empty levels with zero visual interest. There are some shallow turret sections that fall flat. But then there's an Aliens inspired underground 'hive' section which is pretty creepy and atmospheric with pretty intense content which is fantastic.

CONS
- Gameplay seems confused between tight spaces or large empty spaces.
- The special effects setting makes everything blurry. This is to cover up lackluster visuals. Turn this off. It may effect lighting but it won't feel like you're blind.
- It feels disjointed and consistent. It needed better art direction, graphics and setting. Levels needed to be tighter and packed with detail
- The graphics are ugly and don't pay homage to the original Duke Nukem games
- Shooting feels weightless

FINAL THOUGHTS
- Dropped after 7 hours. Not wasting anymore of my time. Go play Duke Nukem 3D

Very good shooter for one evening.Great game!

This is taking forever. Time to stop pissing around and get this big guy back into action.

How is the leaked, unfinished build from 2001 WAY more enjoyable than this?

At the time this game came out it was judged by the contemporary standard of gaming.

Now that we have seen where games have gone, this is nothing but a breath of fresh air and nostalgia for times long gone.

HAIL TO THE KING!!!!

There was a time, long ago, when Duke Nukem Forever was a myth. A legend. The holy grail of delayed games. It was the thing that made you scoff when someone said, "Half-Life 3 is never coming out." Because this game proved that, against all odds, a game could escape development hell after more than a decade. And I, like many others, believed.

I followed every update, every engine swap, every "we're still working on it" with the blind faith of someone who really wanted it to happen. I wanted to believe. But when it finally arrived… well, imagine dusting off a relic from the past, only to realise it’s not as shiny as it once was.

Booting up Duke Nukem Forever was like opening a time capsule from 1998, only to realise everything inside had been left to rot. The first few minutes lulled me into a false sense of security. The music was there. The ego bar instead of a health bar—sure, fine, very Duke. But then the cracks began to show. Movement felt sluggish. A two-weapon limit? Really? Duke was supposed to be the ultimate badass, not some Call of Duty grunt. But I pressed on.

Then it hit me—the humour. Duke Nukem 3D made Duke feel like a loveable rogue. He was a walking 90s action hero parody, a mix of every Schwarzenegger and Stallone character turned up to 11. But here? Here, he felt… off. Less charming rogue, more the kind of guy who gets banned from bars for saying weird things to the waitress. The jokes didn’t just fall flat; they slammed into the floor and burst into flames. I cringed. I winced. I questioned my life choices.

But the real tragedy? Somewhere, buried under the awkward dialogue and weird pacing, there was a Duke Nukem game in here. Some of the levels actually felt like classic Duke—big, sprawling spaces with hidden secrets, fun environmental destruction, and silly over-the-top action. There were moments where I could see the game it might have been if it had actually come out in the early 2000s. But instead, we got a game that was, at best, a relic and, at worst, a cautionary tale about what happens when you keep resurrecting something that probably should’ve stayed dead.

Would I recommend it? Well, if you’re a gaming historian or just morbidly curious, then sure—grab it in a sale for a couple of quid. Play it as an interactive museum exhibit. But if you’re expecting a triumphant return of Duke Nukem, you’re better off replaying Duke Nukem 3D and pretending Forever never happened. Because in the end, it turns out some things shouldn’t last forever.

This game is like meeting an old friend from high school who never moved on from 1997. At first, it’s nostalgic and fun – the one-liners, the testosterone-fueled absurdity, the over-the-top action. But then you realize he’s telling the same jokes he did years ago and thinks flip phones are cutting-edge. If you embrace the chaos and lower your expectations, you might just have a dumb, weirdly entertaining time.

You know the memes. You remember the bad reviews. As someone who loved Duke Nukem 3D, here's my 2 cents.

Its a rushjob. The game has segments that should have been tested further before being released. The monster truck segment for example is easily the worst part if you don't enable V-Sync by default. There's also the fact that the game was trying to chase relevancy. First by imitating Halo (2 gun weapon system), as well as Half-Life (The early parts pre-disaster). There's also the fact that the game is much more linear in comparison with the predecessor where you're encouraged to explore levels and get creative with eliminating your foes. As here, you fight in an arena and have to survive within the box and the driving segments.

But does it stand on its own as a game? It does. The story is fun, the interactions are entertaining and you're in for a solid adventure at the very least. Is it a worthy sequel to 3D? Its an acceptable sequel. Its no Doom 2016 but its not as horrible as the reviews paint it as. Just disappointing if you're expecting Duke Nukem 3D updated.

Treat it as its own game and Duke will at least take you for one last ride.

This game isn't as bad as what most people say it is. I think due to it being in development hell for so many years, people expected more. I think this is a decent successor to Duke Nukem 3D.

Most of the jokes land, it pays homage to the older games in the series, and it is pretty fun over all. It is a bummer that they went with a more linear approach rather than using open levels similar to Duke Nukem 3D but it works.

I did run into a few bugs that kept me from progressing, however I was able to fix this by, no shit, turning on V-Sync. You heard that right... this is the one game where I would recommend turning V-Sync on.

Hail to the king, baby!

its a Classic i always loved Duke Nukem!!!!
On the other hand, The Sound just (All of a sudden STOP PLAYING)..

If it wasnt for the sound issues id be just fine

Threw poo
drew a penis on a whiteboard
drew a penis in a kids book
killed an alien with 3 big titties
then passed out and had a dream in a stripclub
had multiple fun combat experiences

amazing game

BUY NOW

Ignore the positive reviews. I went into this as a millennial fan of the 90's games and was cautiously optimistic after reading tons of reviews that were either lukewarm or downright glowing. Nope, it really is that bad. Not worth it even on sale. Also, it's so poorly optimized that it crashes my high-end gaming rig every time I try to play, which REALLY takes some doing.

Completed in 9 hrs.
Besides some horrible corridors and abuse of the duke vision, this is a great shooter.
/
Lo complete en 9 horas
Aparte de secciones horribles y abuso de la visión de Duke, es un gran shooter.

The game says that it is verified for the Steam Deck yet everytime I get to the part where I take the picture of the kid on Duke's throne, the game glitches out and crashes on me with an error message. Over and Over again. It's a shame because I won't tolerate this nonsense. Not only did I purchase a Steam Deck and the games but now I have to be concerned with if they actually work like Steam promises. No Thanks. Not going to play that game. I can't trust Steam now and I refuse to buy another game and that happens again. Too bad Steam... I'm officially done as a customer. This is the last dollar you will get out of me. GOG is officially much better than this platform. Every game I've purchased on that site works as promised. Never had a single issue.

The main reason I can't recommend this game, is its price.
I would only consider it worth it at 5$ or less.
There are so many games that are better and cheaper.
If you do decide to play this, make sure you turn:
1. post processing off - so the game isn't blurry.
2. vsync on - so you can make the otherwise impossible car jump.

It's a puzzle and platforming game with some shooter and driving elements. It's alright I guess.

this game is so good highly recomned

I didn't know how good I had compared with the 2011 release and now. I miss times when this was an average/bad game. Everything that is missing from the games these days; the “Toxic” muscularity, dad jokes and lovely looking “jags” on girls not bitten with “ugly sticks”

playing this in 2025, being a huge dn3d fan... this game is great. loads of tiny minigames that are good. the vibe.. duke is proud. i remember waiting for this game so many years and then hearing its shit. its not. its fucking great. modern doom is the best similarity. 10/10 recommended even so many years after release.

I don't remember this game being so bad and very cringe, just play DN3D

I remember playing Duke Nukem 1 & 2 when I was a kid on my Dad's old 386. Fun platformers. When Duke Nukem 3D came out me and Dad were blown away, loved it, countless spent hours spent playing it.
When this actually got released I thought I'd give it a go, then I read the reviews and thought maybe not.
Picked it up recently for £3 and thought lets give it a go. I am very glad I didn't pay more than £3 for it. It just feels clunky and unpolished. I was so bored for the first 4/5 "levels" or whatever they are. They feel like loading areas for consoles? The decision to not provide a gun immediately, then forced car driving / shrunk so can't fight bits are a bizarre choice - this is not what I wanted from this game.
After 90 minutes I realised I just wasn't enjoying the gameplay and gave up.
Anyone thinking about trying it, get it 90% off only, otherwise don't bother.

I used to play "Duke Nukem" back in the 90's including "Duke Nukem 3D" when it came out and it had it's own uniqueness back then with the FPS genre kicking off.
This version has kept the "Duke Nukem" vibe alive.
I like it, it's fun.

Decent enough fun, Functional multiplayer, Worth a buy, The DLC is written better then the main story since it was stuck in development hell for so long, But this is a great game to just turn your brain off and have some fun, Just like a Cheesy action movie from the 80's and 90s.

too sexual. Take it easy there. not a fan. gameplay wasnt the best too. hated the sound effects. I'm not woke or anything, but even I found this tasteless

Bring. Back. THE DUKE!!!

Great Value brand Half-Life written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone from an alternate universe where they got in a freak jet ski accident together and suffered debilitating head trauma.

4/10

A turd in the hand is worth two in the bush.

TITS

this is a terrible port of an already mid game. if you really want to play it id recommend you get it on the xbox one. 2/10

It was NEVER going to live up to 14 years of development but as it's own it's fine.

Killin makes my dick hard!!!

Always bet on Duke